Google wants to organize the world’s information but can they organize me?
With an army of tasks mounting an all out siege, I have decided to seek out productivity tools. Is it to late to avert disaster? Like coming to temple only once a year on Yom Kippur I try find remedy for my sins of omission far after the fact.
Google launched last week a Task application within Gmail. Its essentially a to-do list with some handy functions like a scheduler a tool that can pull tasks directly from emails.
I am trying to combine this system with David Allen’s Getting Thing’s Done methods which has a massive, nearly cultish, following.
Allen’s system is based around that all the “stuff” in our life – be it classes or bills to pay or dates to go on – need to be organized in essentially same manner.
The trick to the system is a monk-like commitment to a mundane method of handling incoming tasks:
All things to do – both big and small get collected; you then process the tasks – and figure out the next immediate tasks associated with them. Immediate action items are described in full concrete detail – a step that GTD users say prevents procrastination.
There is a once a week review ritual where outstanding tasks are reprocessed and either dismissed or set into action.
A whole nerdy culture has evolved around GTD – with productivity blogs and even associated gear – think specials folders and notebooks.
Below you can see one guy showing off his filing system and desk organization – he apparently doesn’t have the whole meet women thing on his task list.
But maybe it is worth being as lonely as this man for the bit of calm that comes with knowing that things are getting done.